How combine 2 versions of a document

Amnesiac

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For a some months I have been dual-booting Windows 7 and 10, trying to make my mind up wether to move on to 10 or stay with 7. I am still vacillating...

I have been keping two similar sets of data files (i.e. those files I generate, and add to/detract from, using mainly MSWord and MSExcel) plus music and media files which I just add to, on each system drive. Yes, a bonehead solution, but that's me...
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It just recently dawned on me that I might as well have shortcuts in each OS pointing to the same set of folders on one or the other of the system drives but too late in the game; I now have two sets of slightly differing files of the same name and need to combine them.

So, how combine differing versions of, say, two MSWord files, perhaps 70-100 pages long, of the same name and identical to within 95%, and which I have been laboring on for a loong time; the contents of which are crucial to me, into one w/o losing or adding a single character in the process?

Thank you.

Afterthought: There is also two sets of an image gallery containg about a gazillion images collected over the years; all too precious for me for words.
 
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Solution
You should know that dual-booting multiple versions of windows on the same hard drive without having external backup or Cloud storage backup is NO BUENO!! Very risky! If that Hard Drive or Motherboard crashes in that computer, you are quite likely to lose massive amounts of your data if not all of it.

You have a single-point of failure on that computer with all of your large Word files and years of images. We suggest that you buy a large flash drive or an external hard drive; either which can be had for well under $100 on ebay, amazon, or newegg.com. Cheaper than your Car or Homeowner's insurance, right?? How much is that stuff worth to you, financially? How many hours and how much effort would be...
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You should know that dual-booting multiple versions of windows on the same hard drive without having external backup or Cloud storage backup is NO BUENO!! Very risky! If that Hard Drive or Motherboard crashes in that computer, you are quite likely to lose massive amounts of your data if not all of it.

You have a single-point of failure on that computer with all of your large Word files and years of images. We suggest that you buy a large flash drive or an external hard drive; either which can be had for well under $100 on ebay, amazon, or newegg.com. Cheaper than your Car or Homeowner's insurance, right?? How much is that stuff worth to you, financially? How many hours and how much effort would be required to replace it, if that were even possible???

You should think about having at least 2 different types and locations of backups. One backup can be done on local media such as a flash drive or external hard drive, and another on a Cloud Storage account such as Microsoft OneDrive or GoogleDrive. These Cloud accounts usually will give you 100GB to 1TB for free; if you need more than that you can purchase it online with a Credit Card for about $20/yr. or so.

Might be worth thinking about, as I've been doing dual-boot systems for 25 years; and they are indeed much riskier than single-boot systems. You need to make up your mind which Windows version you want to stick with and re-do your computer with that one (W7 or W10)!! When I worked at IBM and had 70 field engineers, many of them had dual-boot or multi-boot setups on their laptops. They crashed so often, that our Regional Tech Director made us stop issuing laptops to the FE's like this, as we had a whole roomful of techs fixing those things 40 hrs. per week and doing no other productive work! Something to keep in mind.

<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>
 
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Solution
Windows will recognize other versions of Windows just fine. When I actually use to multi-boot I ran XP, Vista and 7 on the same drive without issues.
 
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"You should know that dual-booting multiple versions of windows on the same hard drive without having external backup or Cloud storage backup is NO BUENO!!"

Ouch! ¡No es bueno!, huh? Well, like I said in the OP: 'Yes, a bonehead solution, but that's me...' Still, there is hope yet, even for this bonehead - I uploaded both sets of dox to my Google Drive, so unless Google files for bankruptcy tomorrow and shuts down all things Google, I shuld be fine until the 160 GB external drive arrives from England. That could well be tomorrow, according to the (eBay) ETA.

The media files (19 GB's and adding all the time) would not fit on (the free version of) Google Drive, so I'll just have to rely on the system drive, a Seagate with a Power On Time of 21.9 days according to Speccy, so I think I'll be OK.

Seeyabye!
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